The Best AMD Ryzen 7 Processor – February 2019

Posted by Chris on February 2, 2019

The Ryzen line from AMD launched in 2017, marking the first time in years that AMD had put out viable processors to compete with Intel’s Core series. Earlier this year (2018), AMD put out the second generation of Ryzen processors, continuing the battle against Intel’s latest and greatest and ensuring that AMD stays competitive in the desktop CPU market for years to come.

The Ryzen 7 line is built to compete with Intel’s Core i7 line, as the “7” name might hint. These are high-end desktop processors, made for both cutting-edge gaming performance and great streaming/rendering/heavy productivity tasks. While these processors are costly, they’re meant for independent creators and professionals, not for a common user or someone who just plays games.

With that in mind, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about the Ryzen 7 processors. We’ll tell you where they succeed, where they aren’t needed, and we’ll provide a list of our top 3 picks if you’re interested in buying one.

With no further ado, let’s begin.

Where does Ryzen 7 excel?

The Ryzen 7 shines in the following situations:

Heavy-duty multitasking. Want to push your browser to the limit, while playing a game, while listening to music? With the Ryzen 7’s abundance of cores and threads, you shouldn’t have a problem with any kind of heavy multitasking, so long as you aren’t doing something that is made to utilize all of your cores at once (like rendering a video).

Rendering video on a daily basis. Speaking of rendering video, the Ryzen 7 is awesome in this usage scenario, ensuring rapid render times for HD and Ultra HD video. If you need to render and upload one or more video per day, then a Ryzen 7 is a great choice for you.

Professional gaming and streaming. If you’re a pro gamer who needs to push the most performance or a streamer who needs to be able to stream games without significant performance loss, or both, then a Ryzen 7 is a great pick for you. The Ryzen 7 is built for exactly this kind of usage scenario and should serve you well.

Heavily-threaded applications. Some professional applications, especially for sorting through large collections of data, require exceptional CPU power. The Ryzen 7 is great for applications like these, which will utilize all the threads it has to offer to their fullest potential.

Is the Ryzen 7 overkill for my usage scenarios?

The Ryzen 7 series might not be appropriate if these are your main usage scenarios:

Just gaming. If you’re a hardcore gamer, that’s fine, but unless you’re a pro or a serious streamer, you should probably invest in a Ryzen 5 system instead. You don’t need all the extra cores and threads inherent in a Ryzen 7 system- consider instead putting the extra money toward a GPU upgrade or an SSD upgrade.

Average usage- web browsing, Netflix, etc. Don’t let the Best Buy salesmen fool you: you do not need a $300 processor for basic PC usage! If all you really do is use the Internet and watch Netflix, consider opting for a Ryzen 3 instead, which will excel in those scenarios. Go for a Ryzen 5 if you’re also a gamer, but don’t get a Ryzen 7 unless you actually need all the extra power.

Basic Specs

Core Count – 8 cores (16 with hyperthreading)

Clock Speed – 3.0 GHz (overclockable)

Integrated Graphics – N/A

The Ryzen 7 1700 is our top value pick.

This is because, among other reasons, it’s one of the cheapest Ryzen 7 processors currently available. Currently retailing for $247 on Amazon, it’s the cheapest of our options on this list, while still being very close in performance to our value pick.

Boasting eight cores with hyperthreading, the Ryzen 7 1700 has a whopping sixteen threads. This is higher than most Core i7 thread counts, or really any CPU’s core counts, and because of that the 1700 rips through threaded applications with utmost ease.

Any application you have that can utilize these threads will benefit immensely from them. Streaming applications like OBS, video editing applications like Sony Vegas, and games optimized for multiple cores will all benefit from the usage of a Ryzen 7 processor.

Thanks to its entry-level price point, overclockability, and abundance of threads, the Ryzen 7 1700 is our top pick.

Basic Specs

Core Count – 8 cores (16 with hyperthreading)

Clock Speed – 3.7 GHz (overclockable)

Integrated Graphics – N/A

The Ryzen 7 2700X is our top performance pick, and our second choice overall.

First, let’s talk about that cooler. The Ryzen 7 2700X bundles a Wraith Prism LED cooler, which offers LED color control. While not quite full RGB, this gives quite a bit of visual flair to what is typically an uninteresting component (the cooler). The Wraith Prism also offers some genuinely great cooling performance, which is yet another unusual thing, at least for stock coolers.

In addition to the nifty cooler, the Ryzen 7 2700X offers a significant performance bump over the 1700. At a 17% performance boost to an already top-of-the-line chip, the 2700X offers a compelling option to those who want nothing less than the best.

Where the downsides creep into the picture is with pricing, unfortunately. The 2700X is a lot pricier than the 1700 or the 1700X, which means it may not be the best value proposition. If you have the money to spend and want the extra performance (or the really nifty cooler), then go for it.

Well, just a little more than the 1700. It’s not actually a massive performance gap- you may notice that the only difference in name here is the added X, which is intentional. This is pretty much just a slightly souped-up version of the Ryzen 7 1700.

Honestly, everything we said about the 1700 in the earlier section applies here. The 1700X is pretty much just that…and a bit more. Biggest advantage it has is a higher overclocking headroom (in theory), but if you aren’t interested in overclocking, that benefit may not matter much to you.

If you’re interested in a larger performance leap, consider the Ryzen 7 2700X.